The following appeared in a letter from a homeowner to a friend.
"Of the two leading real estate firms in our town — Adams Realty and Fitch Realty — Adams Realty is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as high as that of Fitch and included home sales that averaged $168,000, compared to Fitch's $144,000. Homes listed with Adams sell faster as well: ten years ago I listed my home with Fitch, and it took more than four months to sell; last year when I sold another home, I listed it with Adams, and it took only one month. Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams Realty."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The argument claims that Adams Realty is superior to Fitch Realty. The claim is based on unwarranted assumptions that render the argument highly suspect. If these assumptions do not hold true, the argument could completely fall apart.
The first assumption made by the letter writer is that Adams Realty is superior to Fitch Realty because of the number of real estate agents employed by Adams Realty is greater than that of Fitch Realty. It is important to point out that number of real estate agents does not directly translate to a superior firm. It is the talent and skill of the real estate agents that count. If the letter writer fails to provide information on performance of the real estate agents, it will undermine the argument that Adams Realty is superior because it has more real estate agents.
Another assumption made in the argument is that the revenue of Adams Realty was twice as high as Fitch Realty and hence if the friend wants to sell his/her house at a good price and quickly, Adams Realty is a place to go. The argument is very vague on the distribution of the revenue of Adams Realty. There is a possibility that Adams Realty specializes in dealing with corporate spaces and that has resulted in high revenues. Without information on the percentage of revenue generated from selling homes, it can not be determined that it is a superior firm to sell your house.
The letter writer points out that Adams Realty sold their houses at an average price of $168,00 compared to Fitch Realty’s average price of $144,000. An average is not the best measure to compare the performance of house sales. It depends on the number of houses sold by the two firms. If Adams Realty sold only two houses at a higher price but took longer time, their average would still be higher than Fitch Realty. On the other hand, if Fitch Realty sold more houses at a good price but sold them quickly, their average could be lower than that of Adam Realty. The average price does not give us any information on the amount of time taken by the two firms to sell their houses. Hence, it can not be used to support the argument that one firm is better than another when it comes to getting your house sold quickly.
The last assumption made by the letter writer is in comparing his/her experience with Adams Realty in the last year with his/her experience with Fitch Realty ten years ago. The argument assumes that the landscape, the real estate market and the house sold at both times were identical in nature and hence can be compared with each other. Such a situation is highly improbable and assuming so seriously undermines the argument as a whole.
The homeowner should be cautious in following the letter writer’s advice.
Unless more information is provided by the letter writer to ensure that his/her assumptions hold true, Adams Realty can not be considered a superior place than Fitch Realty to sell your house quickly and at a good price.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 520 350
No. of Characters: 2382 1500
No. of Different Words: 189 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.775 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.581 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.327 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 163 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 92 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 62 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 36 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.609 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.394 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.391 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.352 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.538 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.164 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 432, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...r writer fails to provide information on performance of the real estate agents, i...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, hence, if, so, still, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 43.0 28.8173652695 149% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2449.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 516.0 441.139720559 117% => OK
Chars per words: 4.74612403101 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.76609204519 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.41668687011 2.78398813304 87% => OK
Unique words: 194.0 204.123752495 95% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.375968992248 0.468620217663 80% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 767.7 705.55239521 109% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.912096643 57.8364921388 86% => OK
Chars per sentence: 106.47826087 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.4347826087 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.21739130435 5.70786347227 39% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 7.0 5.15768463074 136% => Less paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.399187580033 0.218282227539 183% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.134148450893 0.0743258471296 180% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.123338826316 0.0701772020484 176% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.211993169944 0.128457276422 165% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.123068838383 0.0628817314937 196% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.2 14.3799401198 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.57 12.5979740519 84% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.27 8.32208582834 87% => OK
difficult_words: 83.0 98.500998004 84% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Maximum six paragraphs wanted.
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.